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Pedro Domingos

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Pedro Domingos
Domingos in 2023
Born1965 (age 58–59)[1]
Lisbon, Portugal[1]
Alma materUniversity of California, Irvine (MS, PhD)
Instituto Superior Técnico - University of Lisbon (MS, Licentiate)
Known forThe Master Algorithm Markov logic network
AwardsSIGKDD Innovation Award (2014)
AAAI Fellowship (2010)
Sloan Fellowship (2003)
Fulbright Scholarship (1992-1997)
Scientific career
FieldsArtificial intelligence
Machine learning
Data science
InstitutionsUniversity of Washington
ThesisA Unified Approach to Concept Learning (1997)
Doctoral advisorDennis F. Kibler
Doctoral studentsTessa Lau
Websitehomes.cs.washington.edu/~pedrod/

Pedro Domingos (born 1965) is a Professor Emeritus[2] of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. He is a researcher in machine learning known for Markov logic network enabling uncertain inference.[3][4]

Education

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Domingos received an undergraduate degree and Master of Science degree from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST).[5] He moved to the University of California, Irvine, where he received a Master of Science degree followed by his PhD.[5]

Research and career

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After spending two years as an assistant professor at IST, he joined the University of Washington as an assistant professor of Computer Science and Engineering in 1999 and became a full professor in 2012.[6] He started a machine learning research group at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw & Co. in 2018,[7] but left in 2019.[8]

He co-founded the International Machine Learning Society. As of 2018, he was on the editorial board of Machine Learning journal.[9]

In 2020, Domingo criticized the research and activism of multiple AI ethicists, most notably Timnit Gebru and Anima Anandkumar, drawing some criticism himself.[10][11][12]

Publications

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  • Pedro Domingos, The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World, New York, Basic Books, 2015, ISBN 978-0-465-06570-7.
  • Pedro Domingos, "Our Digital Doubles: AI will serve our species, not control it", Scientific American, vol. 319, no. 3 (September 2018), pp. 88–93. "AIs are like autistic savants and will remain so for the foreseeable future.... AIs lack common sense and can easily make errors that a human never would... They are also liable to take our instructions too literally, giving us precisely what we asked for instead of what we actually wanted." (p. 93.)
  • Pedro Domingos, 2040: A Silicon Valley Satire, BookBaby, 2024, ISBN 979-8-350-96334-2.

Awards and honors

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Public Controversy

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According to The Verge, Domingos has clashed with the political left in academia. In 2018 he wrote during a discussion on the University of Washington graduate student list, in the context of James Damore and the University of Washington's Stuart Reges, "One of Stuart's (and Damore's) main points is that perhaps there aren't more women in CS because they're not interested... When a woman is hired or admitted over a more qualified man, the man was discriminated against. Referring to general notions of oppression, benefits, etc. doesn't make it legal or ethical." A responding student criticized Domingos' comment as part of a "hostile and unwelcoming environment".[15]

In December 2020 he criticized NeurIPS papers being given ethics reviews, stating "Since when are scientific conferences in the business of policing the perceived ethics of technical papers".[16] The official Twitter account of the Paul G. Allen school of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where Domingos is professor emeritus, stated "We do not condone a member of our community engaging in a Twitter flame war belittling individuals and downplaying valid concerns over ethics in AI".[17] Domingos has published advice on debating "social-justice radicals" in Quillette, writing "Cancelers take themselves extremely seriously, imagining themselves to be social-justice angels whose holy ends justify every imaginable means." Domingos cites his experiences growing up with a Portuguese dictatorship before the 1970s, and argues for free speech, rhetorically stating that "(If) I get to declare what speech is harmful and what isn't, I can install my tyranny because I can decide what you say and not."[15]

Domingos continues to be embroiled in public controversy by tweeting opinions on gender differences in academia and society at large. In 2022, Domingos posted a tweet where he concluded that less-qualified female applicants were being favored over more-qualified male applicants (based upon the large percentage of female academic applicants that received job offers),[18][19] which later received added context from twitter moderators stating "[Domingos'] estimate comes not from real world data but a misunderstanding of a study that had academics consider hypothetical candidates for tenure.".[20] The official Twitter account of the Allen school also denounced this tweet.[21] In 2023 Domingos stated "Women are more neurotic than men, and as they gain more power society becomes more neurotic as well." with no scientific citation.[22]

References

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  1. ^ a b Miguel Ángel García Vega (1 October 2016). ""Hay algoritmos que no controlamos tomando decisiones"" [There are algorithms that we do not control making decisions]. El País (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 5 July 2022.
  2. ^ "Emeritus Faculty". Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Retrieved 12 December 2020.
  3. ^ Scheuermann, Christoph; Zand, Bernhard (16 April 2018). "Pedro Domingos on the Arms Race in Artificial Intelligence". Der Spiegel.
  4. ^ Domingos, Pedro; Pazzani, Michael (1997). "On the Optimality of the Simple Bayesian Classifier under Zero-One Loss". Machine Learning. 29 (2/3): 103–130. doi:10.1023/A:1007413511361. ISSN 0885-6125.
  5. ^ a b Domingos, Pedro. "Pedro Domingos". Retrieved 17 November 2018.
  6. ^ "Pedro Domingos | Computer Science & Engineering". www.cs.washington.edu. Retrieved 2019-05-12.
  7. ^ Wigglesworth, Robin (16 August 2018). "DE Shaw taps academic to set up new machine learning group". Financial Times.
  8. ^ "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Pedro M. Domingos. Retrieved 12 December 2020.
  9. ^ Cantrell, Amanda (August 16, 2018). "D.E. Shaw Launches Machine Learning Unit". Institutional Investor.
  10. ^ Schiffer, Zoe (2021-03-05). "Timnit Gebru was fired from Google — then the harassers arrived". The Verge. Retrieved 23 May 2021.
  11. ^ Soper, Taylor (2020-12-16). "Retired UW computer science professor embroiled in Twitter spat over AI ethics and 'cancel culture'". GeekWire. Retrieved 23 May 2021.
  12. ^ Greene, Tristan (2020-12-15). "'Why are minorities in STEM so easily offended?' And other stupid questions answered". The Next Web | Neural. Retrieved 23 May 2021.
  13. ^ 2014 SIGKDD Innovation Award: Pedro Domingos
  14. ^ "Elected AAAI Fellows". aaai.org.
  15. ^ a b Schiffer, Zoe (5 March 2021). "Timnit Gebru was fired from Google — then the harassers arrived". The Verge.
  16. ^ "Article adding context to debate". Retrieved 2 February 2023.
  17. ^ "Tweet from UWCSE". Retrieved 2 February 2023.
  18. ^ "Tweet by Pedro Domingos". Retrieved 2 February 2023.
  19. ^ "Article adding context to debate". Retrieved 2 February 2023.
  20. ^ "Link from twitter moderators". Retrieved 2 February 2023.
  21. ^ "Geekwire article providing context and comments directly from Domingos". Retrieved 2 February 2023.
  22. ^ "Tweet by Pedro Domingos". Retrieved 2 February 2023.
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